National and Subnational estimates for the United Kingdom

Identifying changes in the reproduction number, rate of spread, and doubling time during the course of the COVID-19 outbreak whilst accounting for potential biases due to delays in case reporting both nationally and subnationally in the United Kingdom. These results are impacted by changes in testing effort, increases and decreases in testing effort will increase and decrease reproduction number estimates respectively (see Methods for further explanation).

Table of Contents


Using data available up to the: 2020-04-23

Note that it takes time for infection to cause symptoms, to get tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection, for a positive test to return and ultimately to enter the case data presented here. In other words, today’s case data are only informative of new infections about two weeks ago. This is reflected in the plots below, which are by date of infection.

Expected daily confirmed cases by region


Figure 1: The results of the latest reproduction number estimates (based on estimated confirmed cases with a date of infection on the 2020-04-13) in the United Kingdom, stratified by region, can be summarised by whether confirmed cases are likely increasing or decreasing. This represents the strength of the evidence that the reproduction number in each region is greater than or less than 1, respectively (see the methods for details). Regions with fewer than 40 confirmed cases reported on a single day are not included in the analysis (light grey). Note that only English regions are currently mapped but all UK regions are included in the following plots. This will be addressed in the next update.

National summary

Summary (estimates as of the 2020-04-13)

Table 1: Latest estimates (as of the 2020-04-13) of the number of confirmed cases by date of infection, the expected change in daily confirmed cases, the effective reproduction number, the doubling time, and the adjusted R-squared of the exponential fit. The mean and 90% credible interval is shown for each numeric estimate.
Estimate
New confirmed cases by infection date 5019 (4748 – 5288)
Expected change in daily cases Unsure
Effective reproduction no. 1 (1 – 1)
Doubling time (days) -230 (120 – Inf)
Adjusted R-squared 0.051 (-0.17 – 0.4)

Reported confirmed cases, their estimated date of infection, and time-varying reproduction number estimates


Figure 2: A.) Confirmed cases by date of report (bars) and their estimated date of infection. B.) Time-varying estimate of the effective reproduction number. Light ribbon = 90% credible interval; dark ribbon = the 50% credible interval. Estimates are shown until the 2020-04-13.Dark grey ribbon = 50% credible interval. Confidence in the estimated values is indicated by translucency with increased translucency corresponding to reduced confidence.

Time-varying rate of growth and doubling time


Figure 3: A.) Time-varying estimate of the rate of growth, B.) Time-varying estimate of the doubling time in days (note that when the rate of growth is negative the doubling time is assumed to be infinite), C.) The adjusted R-squared estimates indicating the goodness of fit of the exponential regression model (with values closer to 1 indicating a better fit). Estimates are shown until the 2020-04-13. Light ribbon = 90% credible interval; dark ribbon = the 50% credible interval. Confidence in the estimated values is indicated by translucency with increased translucency corresponding to reduced confidence.

Regional Breakdown

Data availability

Limitations

Summary of latest reproduction number and confirmed case count estimates by date of infection


Figure 4: Confirmed cases with date of infection on the 2020-04-13 and the time-varying estimate of the effective reproduction number (light bar = 90% credible interval; dark bar = the 50% credible interval.). Regions are ordered by the number of expected daily confirmed cases and shaded based on the expected change in daily confirmed cases. The dotted line indicates the target value of 1 for the effective reproduction no. required for control and a single case required for elimination.

Reproduction numbers over time in the six regions expected to have the most new confirmed cases


Figure 5: Time-varying estimate of the effective reproduction number (light ribbon = 90% credible interval; dark ribbon = the 50% credible interval) in the regions expected to have the highest number of new confirmed cases. Estimates are shown up to the 2020-04-13. Confidence in the estimated values is indicated by translucency with increased translucency corresponding to reduced confidence. The dotted line indicates the target value of 1 for the effective reproduction no. required for control.

Reported confirmed cases and their estimated date of infection in the six regions expected to have the most new confirmed cases


Figure 6: Confirmed cases by date of report (bars) and their estimated date of infection (light ribbon = 90% credible interval; dark ribbon = the 50% credible interval) in the regions expected to have the highest number of new confirmed cases. Estimates are shown up to the 2020-04-13. Confidence in the estimated values is indicated by translucency with increased translucency corresponding to reduced confidence.

Reproduction numbers over time in all regions


Figure 7: Time-varying estimate of the effective reproduction number (light ribbon = 90% credible interval; dark ribbon = the 50% credible interval) in all regions. Estimates are shown up to the 2020-04-13. Confidence in the estimated values is indicated by translucency with increased translucency corresponding to reduced confidence. The dotted line indicates the target value of 1 for the effective reproduction no. required for control.

Reported confirmed cases and their estimated date of infection in all regions

Figure 8: Confirmed cases by date of report (bars) and their estimated date of infection (light ribbon = 90% credible interval; dark ribbon = the 50% credible interval) in all regions. Estimates are shown up to the 2020-04-13. Confidence in the estimated values is indicated by translucency with increased translucency corresponding to reduced confidence.

Latest estimates (as of the 2020-04-13)

Table 2: Latest estimates (as of the 2020-04-13) of the number of confirmed cases by date of infection, the effective reproduction number, and the doubling time in each region. The mean and 90% credible interval is shown.
Region New confirmed cases by infection date Expected change in daily cases Effective reproduction no. Doubling time (days)
Ayrshire and Arran 25 (10 – 42) Unsure 1 (0.6 – 1.4) -45 (7 – Inf)
East Midlands 118 (76 – 154) Decreasing 0.7 (0.6 – 0.9) -11 (Inf – Inf)
East of England 160 (97 – 231) Decreasing 0.7 (0.5 – 0.8) -7.3 (Inf – Inf)
Fife 23 (7 – 36) Unsure 1 (0.5 – 1.4) 140 (5.6 – Inf)
Forth Valley 37 (12 – 58) Likely increasing 1.4 (0.8 – 1.9) 9.5 (3.7 – Inf)
Grampian 35 (17 – 54) Likely increasing 1.3 (0.8 – 1.7) 18 (4.8 – Inf)
Greater Glasgow and Clyde 74 (46 – 98) Unsure 1 (0.8 – 1.2) 310 (11 – Inf)
Lanarkshire 36 (16 – 52) Unsure 1 (0.6 – 1.3) -52 (9.1 – Inf)
London 313 (229 – 399) Decreasing 0.6 (0.5 – 0.7) -6.4 (Inf – Inf)
Lothian 69 (45 – 91) Unsure 1.1 (0.9 – 1.4) 24 (7.6 – Inf)
North East 187 (137 – 225) Decreasing 0.8 (0.6 – 0.9) -12 (Inf – Inf)
North West 322 (225 – 395) Decreasing 0.7 (0.5 – 0.8) -7.4 (Inf – Inf)
Northern Ireland 147 (112 – 184) Increasing 1.3 (1 – 1.7) 19 (6.9 – Inf)
South East 293 (219 – 377) Decreasing 0.7 (0.6 – 0.8) -9 (Inf – Inf)
South West 128 (78 – 172) Decreasing 0.8 (0.6 – 1) -12 (Inf – Inf)
Tayside 29 (12 – 45) Likely decreasing 0.9 (0.5 – 1.2) -21 (10 – Inf)
Wales 296 (248 – 345) Unsure 1 (0.9 – 1.2) 190 (21 – Inf)
West Midlands 184 (126 – 236) Decreasing 0.7 (0.5 – 0.8) -8.7 (Inf – Inf)
Yorkshire and The Humber 160 (109 – 200) Decreasing 0.7 (0.6 – 0.9) -9.2 (Inf – Inf)

Abbott, Sam, Joel Hellewell, James D. Munday, and Sebastian Funk. 2020. “NCoVUtils: Utility Functions for the 2019-Ncov Outbreak.” - - (-): –. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3635417.

Doughty, Emma. 2020. “Visualisation of Covid-19 Official Uk Case Data.” Github Repository. https://github.com/emmadoughty/Daily_COVID-19/.

Xu, Bo, Bernardo Gutierrez, Sarah Hill, Samuel Scarpino, Alyssa Loskill, Jessie Wu, Kara Sewalk, et al. n.d. “Epidemiological Data from the nCoV-2019 Outbreak: Early Descriptions from Publicly Available Data.” http://virological.org/t/epidemiological-data-from-the-ncov-2019-outbreak-early-descriptions-from-publicly-available-data/337.

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